Etymologies

Examples

One of Cameron's speechwriters told us privately he hated the 'be nice to gays' thing, while a big name frontbencher predicted a mess over Cameron's suggestion that faith schools should allow children of other faiths in (Will Cardinal Murphy O'Connor really want to allow Muslim pupils into Catholic schools?

At the other end of the spectrum are schools such as Lilian Baylis Technology School in Kennington, south London, the school made infamous by ex-Etonian and current Tory frontbencher Oliver Letwin when in 2003 he crassly claimed he would rather "beg on the street" than let his child go to such a school.

Prince Andrew faced calls to resign from Mike Gapes, a former chair of the Commons foreign affairs select committee, and Chris Bryant, the Labour frontbencher, but David Cameron and George Osborne each issued votes of confidence.

But Labour, which was informed of the dinner in a letter to the frontbencher Kevin Brennan, is likely to ask questions about Llewellyn's decision to meet the Met commissioner in the company of Wallis at a time when questions were being asked about the links between the Yard and News International.

In the run-up to the election I was the first frontbencher to call for a judicial inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal, and of course the newspaper that put people on to me and broke the story about the affair was the News of the World.

Last week, almost six years on, Labour MPs and some Conservatives were questioning how successful that rebranding had been after Cameron – under pressure at prime minister's questions – tried to slap down the opposition frontbencher Angela Eagle with the disastrously ill-chosen line "calm down, dear".

Paul Goodman, a former Tory frontbencher now working for the ConservativeHome website, agrees: "I think that with the modern media, trying to have a public conversation would lead to endless reports about splits and it would become impossible."